Leadership Matters: Unleashing the Power of Paradox

co-authored by Political Science Professor Tom Cronin

Cronin’s newest book is the recipient of the 2013 Outstanding Leadership Book Award. Unlike many books that emphasize specific rules and characteristics of leadership, this book takes a more nuanced view. The award committee praised it for its “clear examples, cogent arguments, and careful critical analysis,” saying that its accessible and provocative approach challenges practitioners and scholars to rethink prevailing theories.

ISBN-13: 978-1612051437. Published by Paradigm Publishers, 2012.

Red Flower, White Flower

by Jennifer Tseng ’91

Tseng’s poems are lyric interviews with communion and solitude, nativity and immigration, generation and regeneration. Like a tree that bears both red and white fruit, the two flowers are grafted; their meanings grow from one tangled source. “Red Flower, White Flower” is the winner of the 2012 Marick Press Poetry Prize; Tseng’s “The Man With My Face” won the 2005 Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s National Poetry Manuscript Competition and a 2006 PEN American Center Open Book Award.

ISBN-13: 978-1934851517. Marick Press, 2013.

The Great Divide

by Al “Doc” Mehl ’77

Classmates know him as “Al,” but on the western entertainment circuit, folks just call him “Doc.” With one foot in the past and one in the present, Al “Doc” Mehl (who is an M.D., by the way) weaves the history and mystery of the West into his original cowboy poetry and music.  “Listening to Doc is like having Lyle Lovett in one ear … and Tommy Smothers in the other,” says songwriter Jon Chandler. “The Great Divide,” his latest recording, was recognized as the 2013 Cowboy Poetry CD of the Year by both the Western Music Association and the Academy of Western Artists. This is Mehl’s second CD of original poetry; he also has two CDs of original contemporary western music.

ASIN: B00B94VQ2M. Label: CD Baby.

Deep Green Yoga

by Elaine Ivaldi Pierce ’68

A 45-year student of yoga, Pierce’s practice for the past 30 years has been devoted to the study of how geometric patterns that organize the universe apply to human posture. The book explores seven geometric patterns that unfurl through the natural world and the thousands of positions known as yoga poses. Pierce’s book broadens the definition of yoga as “union” as it strengthens connections not only within one’s body, but also with the natural world.

ASIN: B00KSNVI50. Amazon Digital Services Inc.

The King of Sports

by Gregg Easterbrook ’76

This book by the author of the popular ESPN.com column “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” tells the story of how football became so deeply ingrained in American culture. Both good and bad, Easterbrook examines football’s impact on American society at all levels of the game and shows how one big university, Virginia Tech, “does football right.” Then he reports on what’s wrong with football at the youth, high school, college, and professional levels.

ISBN-13: 978-1250011718. Published by Thomas Dunne Books, 2013.

Armor and Blood

by History Professor Dennis E. Showalter

Showalter offers the definitive account of the Battle of Kursk, regarded as the largest tank battle in history, and, according to some historians, the greatest land battle in history. The 1943 clash of machines and men matched the indomitable will of the Soviet Red Army against the might of the Nazi Wehrmacht. Be prepared for a wild and riotous ride over the steppes of Russia, with Showalter, one of America’s most distinguished military historians, as your guide.

ISBN-13: 978-1400066773. Published by Random House, 2013.

American Indians and the American Imaginary

by Pauline Turner Strong ’75

“American Indians and the American Imaginary” explores the power of representations of Native Americans in American public culture. The book’s wide-ranging case studies move from colonial captivity narratives to modern film, from the campfire to the sports arena, from legal and scholarly texts to tribe-controlled museums and cultural centers. Strong is the director of the Humanities Institute and associate professor of anthropology and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

ISBN-13: 978-1612050485. Published by Paradigm Publishers, 2013.

My Children’s Children: Raising Young Citizens in the Age of Columbine

by Robert Saul ’72

Initially started as a series of op-ed articles for a newspaper, this work by Saul evolved into a parental guide for raising children to be good citizens. Saul, the medical director of general pediatrics, senior medical director of Medicaid practices, and clinical professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Greenville Health System and the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, believes that good citizens care for one another and their community — the hallmark of a democratic society.

ISBN-13: 978-1493502363. Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. 

Jesus Loves You but Not Today

by Miles White ’92

Designed as the first volume in the Canvas Sextet series of contemporary literary fiction, the book is comprised of stories that are comic, tragic, and often hilarious. The stories are told with only as many words as can fit on a single standard blank page in Word, single-spaced, using 12-point Times Roman font. The result is stories that are provocative and unsettling, dramatic narrative condensed down to an essence.

ASIN: B00I5RLVJE. Published by Bad Whiskey Press, 2014.

Peregrine Falcons of the World

co-authored by Emeritus Biology Professor James Enderson

Drawing on a lifetime of friendship and the expertise of the authors, this book examines how peregrines have adjusted, since the Pleistocene, to many of the Earth’s most demanding climates. The authors base their work on the primary literature of scientific information and unpublished reports, as well as a global network of friends and colleagues. They depended on the experiences of nearly a score of decades, collectively, of work at eyries, and trapping peregrines on their migrations and non-breeding grounds with students.

ISBN-13: 978-8496553927. Published by Lynx Edicions, 2013.

The Creative Conversation: ArtMaking as Playful Prayer

by Bridget Benton ’92

Artist and creativity guide Benton approaches creativity as a form of spiritual practice that anyone, regardless of religious background or prior art experience, can enjoy.  “The Creative Conversation,” her first book, has received the gold medal in the national Nautilus Book Awards’ creative process category and a silver medal in the personal growth/self help category. The Nautilus Awards are given for books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and social change.

ISBN-13: 978-0984456802. Published by Eyes Aflame Publishing, 2011.

The New Brand Spirit: How Communicating Sustainability Builds Brands, Reputations and Profits

by Marjorie Ellis Thompson ’78

Effective sustainability communication can deliver business value. Get it wrong, however, and the reputational damage can be costly. Stakeholders, the general public, and activists are unforgiving of companies whose products, services, business practices, or culture fall short of their socially responsible rhetoric. Based on nearly 100 in-depth interviews with leading experts, the book helps corporate communications and marketing professionals tackle this conundrum by providing a first-hand view of eight distinct and relevant stakeholder perspectives.

ISBN-13: 978-0566092442. Published by Gower Publishing Co., 2013.

Ban the Booze

co-authored by Betty Alt ’60

The subtitle says it all: “Prohibition in the Rockies.” Alt, in her ninth book with co-author Sandra K. Wells, takes a look at the 18 years of Prohibition in Colorado. They cover the purpose, problems, and people involved in the “noble experiment and fascinating — and sometimes amusing — stories of making and distributing bootleg booze.” Numerous photos from the Library of Congress lend the book a sense of time and place.

ISBN-13: 978-1457521676. Dog Ear Publishing, 2013.

Love You More Than Anything

by Anna Harber Freeman ’95

Freeman’s book, featuring two chipmunk parents, is part of the Snuggle Time Stories series. The chipmunks spend a day with their children, enjoying nature, a picnic lunch, flying kites, and chocolate cake. Love is expressed with hugs and laughter; even the bedtime routine is fun with this mom and dad. The double-page illustrations are playful and energetic, just like the colorful text.

ISBN-13: 978-1454900214. Published by Sterling Children’s Books, 2014.

Beyond Post-Traumatic Stress: Homefront Struggles with the Wars on Terror

co-authored by Anthropology Professor Sarah Hautzinger

Hautzinger and co-author Jean Scandlyn tell a tale of two cultures, tracing the contours of what some call the military-civilian cultural gap. They call for expanded efforts to confront war’s costs for combat veterans and their communities, arguing for a new approach to combat stress and trauma, seeing them not just as individual medical pathologies but as fundamentally collective cultural phenomena.

ISBN-13: 978-1611323665. Published by Left Coast Press, 2013.

A Change in Worlds on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands: Politics, Economies, and Environments in Northern Sichuan

by Jack Patrick Hayes ’96

Hayes, who teaches at Kwantlen University and works for the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, offers an incisive and detailed account of the socio-environmental transformation of the borderland region of Songpan from the Qing dynasty to the present. He addresses cutting-edge issues in the understanding of China’s history, notably the processes of human-induced environmental change, and the ways in which environment and ethnicity in late imperial and modern China inform each other.

ISBN-13: 978-0739173800. Published by Lexington Books, 2013.